Interests: How to Improve Campaign Targeting and Personalization

Your contacts are already showing you which topics capture their attention. A click in an email or a visit to a tracked webpage can reveal an affinity for a product, service, event, or topic.

But what should you do with that information in your next campaign? Should you create a separate audience, personalize a content block, or simply recommend a more relevant resource?

Interests make these signals actionable. To get real value from them, your team needs to decide which topics matter to your strategy and how detected interests can improve your communications.

From Clicks to Interest Signals

A click is more than an engagement metric. The content behind it tells you which topic a contact chose to engage with at a given moment.

Someone who visits a page about cybersecurity training sends a different signal from someone who explores content about leadership. These interactions do not prove immediate purchase intent, but they do provide useful information: the contact engaged with content associated with a specific topic.

Interpreting these signals manually can quickly become complex. Your team needs to understand each piece of content, assign it to a category, identify the relevant contacts, and maintain those rules across campaigns. As your content library grows, interactions can easily remain buried in reports instead of improving future communications.

A Detected Interest Is a Starting Point, Not a Conclusion

With Interests, you define the topics you want to track. DiA analyzes the content contacts view after clicking an email or visiting a webpage tracked through Journeys, then associates detected interests with the relevant contacts.

To learn how the feature works, read our latest update on Interests.

The real marketing question comes next: how can you use that affinity to deliver a more relevant message?

💡 Key takeaway
A detected interest represents an affinity for a topic, not proof of purchase intent. At this time, assigned interests are treated equally: they are not ranked based on the number of clicks, how recent the interactions are, or how often the behavior occurs.

Avoid treating an interest as an engagement score or sales priority. Combine it with the other information available to you, such as the contact’s profile, their relationship with your organization, and their eligibility for the offer.

Three Criteria for Choosing Useful Interests

Technology can automate the analysis, but your team still has one essential responsibility: deciding which interests are worth tracking.

1. They Align With Your Campaigns

An interest should represent a topic, product, or service you actually communicate about. If the information does not influence any marketing decision, it will add complexity without creating value.

2. They Are Clear and Specific Enough

Choose names that everyone on your team can easily understand, such as “Cybersecurity,” “Management Training,” or “Cultural Events.”
An interest like “Products” is too broad to support meaningful personalization. On the other hand, creating a separate category for every webpage quickly becomes difficult to maintain.
Aim for the level of detail that would allow you to adjust an audience, a piece of content, or an offer.

3. They Have Supporting Content and an Activation Plan

Make sure contacts will actually have opportunities to engage with content related to each interest.
You should also determine what that information could change: the selected segment, the content displayed, the offer presented, or the follow-up campaign.
The value does not come from detecting an interest alone. It comes from the more relevant decision that interest enables.

Example: Turning a Detected Interest Into a More Relevant Communication

Consider an organization that offers training in cybersecurity, leadership, and financial management.

1. Choose an Interest Tied to a Real Decision

The team creates a “Cybersecurity” interest because it has content on the topic and wants to promote a related training program.
The decision addresses a real marketing need rather than simply trying to categorize every interaction.

2. Observe the Detected Affinity

A contact clicks a newsletter link to an article about data protection. If DiA detects a match with the “Cybersecurity” interest, that interest is associated with the contact’s profile.
The team now has a useful signal, but it cannot conclude that the person wants to register for training or that they are more interested than another contact.

3. Combine the Interest With Campaign Criteria

Before promoting the program, the team checks the other relevant criteria: the contact’s profile, communication language, eligibility for the training, and email consent.
It also excludes people who are already registered.
The interest therefore enhances targeting without replacing business rules.

4. Personalize the Communication

Two options are possible:

• Create a topic-based audience to promote the program to relevant contacts with tailored messaging and a targeted call to action.
• Personalize a block in the next newsletter to highlight a cybersecurity resource or training program without adding another send.
  If several interests can trigger different content, the team should define which content takes priority.

For contacts with no detected interest, it should also plan a relevant default experience.

5. Measure the Impact of Personalization

The team can then monitor clicks to the resource, registrations, and unsubscribes.
Whenever possible, it should compare those results with general content delivered under similar conditions.
The goal is not simply to confirm that an interest was detected. It is to determine whether using that interest actually improves the communication.

Better Targeting Does Not Mean More Messages

Detecting an interest should not automatically increase the number of messages a contact receives.
Often, the best use of an interest is to make existing communications more relevant: recommend a better resource, replace a generic content block, or avoid presenting an offer that does not align with the contact’s observed interests.
Consent requirements still apply. An interest can enrich your understanding of a contact, but it never replaces permission to communicate.
You should also avoid categories that could reveal or allow you to infer sensitive information.

Where Should You Start?

Choose a few interests that are directly connected to your priorities and ask yourself four questions:

1. Do we have enough content related to this topic?
2. Can this interest improve a real campaign?
3. Will everyone on the team understand what it means?
4. Do we know how to use it to improve segmentation or personalization?

Then test one interest in a simple campaign. Review the results and adjust your categories as needed.A small, well-activated interest structure will be far more useful than a long list of interests that are never used.

Turn Attention Into Relevance

A detected interest becomes valuable when it changes a decision: selecting an audience, recommending a better resource, or replacing generic content.
Start with a few topics connected to your campaigns, combine detected affinities with the criteria you already use, and measure the impact of your decisions. The goal is not to pretend you know everything about every contact. It is to use the interactions already available to make your next communication more relevant.